Not So Subtle
by likecominghome
Summary: After Lydia finds a ring box in the closet, she drops what she thinks are subtle hints to urge Stiles along. Stydia.


She wasn't snooping.

Honestly, it was completely an accident.

All she wanted was the oversized university sweater that he kept on the top of his side of the closet. It was starting to get chilly out and despite the fact that his clothing generally swallowed her petite frame, that navy blue hoodie was always warm and cozy and smelled like cedar: just like Stiles.

Her boyfriend was currently out renting a DVD and buying the necessities needed for the perfect movie date night. They'd both had stressful weeks at work and although she did love dressing up and going out, tonight she was perfectly content with being wrapped in Stiles's arms as she watched a cheesy romantic comedy and falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

Of course, no movie night would be complete without her favorite hoodie: the one she'd claimed from Stiles three months ago and had no intention of returning.

Standing up on the balls of her feet, she reached up to grab the folded sweatshirt from the top shelf of the closet. She was successful in retrieving what she desired, but in the process, she pulled down the pile of sweaters beneath it, sending them tumbling to the ground.

She winced as she quickly pulled the hoodie over her head before squatting down to collect the fallen sweaters. She stopped short when she spotted something beneath the pile: the corner of a small box colored an unmistakable shade of light blue.

Holding her breath, she pulled it out, her eyes widening as she read the block letters written on the top is silver.

_Tiffany & Co. _

It was a ring. She didn't have to open the box to know exactly what was inside.

A million questions raced through her mind.

How long had Stiles had it? When was he planning to propose? Was it going to be romantic and well thought out or was he going to wait for the right moment and just see how it went?

Her thought process was interrupted when she heard the door of the apartment open and she quickly stuffed the box back beneath the pile of sweaters and tossed them onto the top shelf. Shoving her hands in the pocket of the hoodie, she stepped out into the hallway to find Stiles heading into the kitchen. His hair was tousled and his cheeks rosy from the wind.

"Hey," he said a little breathlessly as he deposited a handful of bags on the kitchen counter. "I got all of your favorites: Twizzlers, Peanut M&Ms, Popcorn, Coke, Ginger Ale, and I even found a huge bag of chocolate covered raisins. Plus…."

He held up a DVD case in his other hand, grinning triumphantly. "Love Actually. I found it in one of those clearance bins, though I'm not sure why anyone would want to throw away such a cinematic masterpiece."

She stared at him in awe. It was incredible really, that she'd been in denial for all those years about her feelings for him. It took her long enough to finally admit it, but she'd never been happier with a decision in her life.

"Thanks, baby," she said softly. Skipping up towards him, she flattened her palms on his chest and kissed him firmly on the lips.

He returned the pressure, but his eyebrows were raised in surprise when they pulled apart. "Wow. That was nice."

She shrugged and pecked his lips again before turning to pull out bowls for their snacks. "I just love you."

Grinning, he kissed her quickly on the cheek and started to rip open the bags. "Good to know."

They settled into the couch, Lydia shifting herself into her favorite movie watching position: her head nestled against Stiles's shoulder and his arm wrapped securely around her with his hand gently massaging her waist.

As the movie played, they talked quietly and munched on their snacks and sipped their drinks and not for the first time, Lydia wondered what it would be like to be married to Stiles.

They had been dating since their senior year of high school. Six years later, he was still her favorite thing to wake up to in the morning. She couldn't imagine a life without him, a life where her days weren't punctuated with laughter and she didn't fall asleep thinking that if everything else went wrong, then at least she had done something right.

Of course, they'd had their problems. She studied abroad in Italy for her junior year in college and the long distance had strained their relationship. They were both incredibly stubborn and strong willed. Her expectation of being right combined with his constant sarcastic wit caused plenty of tension. But despite everything, he was always the first person she wanted to talk to when something happened, good or bad. And she figured that meant that he would always be an important part of her life.

She'd figured out ages ago that a life without Stiles would always feel incomplete.

"You alright?"

He whispered against her hair, pressing his lips to the top of her head as she sighed in contentment and smiled. "I'm perfect."

She felt him smile against her head as he spoke. "I know."

She could have brought up her discovery of the ring in the closet, but she decided to let nature take its course. She didn't want to ruin any of Stiles's plans. But when he did propose, she would whole heartedly, unreservedly say yes.

…

One month later she decided she needed to revise that plan.

Because nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing.

It was as though proposing was the farthest thing from Stiles's mind; nothing in his actions or words remotely suggested he'd even considered popping the question. He wasn't nervous or acting any stranger than usual and they hadn't gone on any elaborately romantic or spontaneous dates. No, life was just going as normal, leaving Lydia wondering if she had completely misinterpreted the situation.

Under normal circumstances, she probably wouldn't have cared. Getting married wasn't extremely high on her list of priorities, but now that she knew it was a possibility, she was having trouble burying the idea.

So she decided to start dropping hints, subtle ones, of course.

She started off by working the word 'wedding' or 'marriage' into their conversation by informing him that her college roommate was now engaged. This was a lie, but she wanted to gauge his reaction to the subject, or maybe spark some action.

Unfortunately, he simply exclaimed that it was great news and then went on to talk about the renovations Scott had made to his new bike.

At that point, she decided to throw subtlety out the window.

She subscribed to bridal magazines and when they arrived, she made sure to spread them across the kitchen counter so Stiles would see them.

He arrived home and raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw her flipping through one.

"Hey," he greeted, leaning down to kiss her greeting. "What's that?"

She shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. "Just looking."

His eyebrows shot up. "At wedding dresses? Why? Wait…did Allison get engaged?"

If he was closer, she would have punched him. Rolling her eyes, she shook her head as he shrugged off hit coat and hung it up. "Nope."

"Oh," he nodded, "Well, I would say you should buy one, but where would you wear it?"

Her jaw dropped and she sent him daggers with her eyes as he walked into the bedroom to shower, looking quite pleased with himself.

…

After a week of no more progress, she tried a different tactic. Maybe showing him pictures of rings would help him to remember the one that was sitting on the top shelf of the closet.

So when they were eating breakfast together one Sunday morning, she asked him his opinion on a picture of a diamond solitaire she had found on the internet.

"Sparkly," he noted before turning back to his newspaper. She would have been inclined to believe that he genuinely had nothing to say on the matter had it not been for the ever so slight upturn of the corners of his lips.

By this time, she'd had it.

Honestly, she had no idea why it was annoying her so much, but ever since she found the ring in the closet, she couldn't help but wonder why he still hadn't proposed.

It couldn't because he was planning a surprise. Because even Stiles couldn't come up with a proposal so elaborate that it took six weeks after actually buying a ring to plan. Besides, he knew her well enough to know she'd probably be embarrassed by something of that nature anyway. She'd much prefer something intimate and romantic, neither of which could be used to describe her next words.

"You're such an asshole."

His eyebrows shot up. "I actually have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb, Stiles, it's unattractive," she sniped.

He pursed his lips. "Humor me."

"Why haven't you proposed to me?"

There was silence as he blinked at her, absolutely dumbfounded. He parted his lips and squinted his eyes and stared at her in disbelief for a good thirty seconds before responding. "Is that something people normally do after they've been called an asshole?"

"No," she crossed her arms over her chest, "But it is something people normally do when they've been hiding an engagement ring in their closet for six weeks."

"Say what now?"

"I found the Tiffany's box in your closet," she replied, her gaze stony, "I found it six weeks ago. Yet you still haven't actually proposed to me. Why is that?"

He blinked slowly and his hesitance and confusion caused her eyes to widen in horror as she came to a startling conclusion.

"It wasn't a ring, was it?"

She only allowed a split second of silence before she covered her mouth with both hands and tried not to squeal with embarrassment.

There was no response and she was almost certain her heart had stopped beating entirely when he rose from his chair and disappeared into the bedroom. She regained her capacity to breathe when he returned a few moments later, holding that stupid blue box in his hand.

Silently, he opened the outer one to reveal a navy ring box inside, which was then popped open to showcase the most beautiful diamond ring she'd ever seen in her life.

"I've had it for a while," he said quietly, tossing the boxes to the side and holding the ring between his thumb and forefinger. "I bought it three years ago."

"That long?" Her voice cracked, but she was impressed that she was able to form words at all given that she had yet to wrap her mind around what was happening.

The corners of his lips tugged upwards into a smile, his eyes twinkling in that way that always left her breathless. "I've loved you since the third grade, Lydia. Why wouldn't I want to marry you?"

"Then why didn't you propose three years ago?" she whispered, now able to hear her heart pounding.

"Because you weren't ready," he replied simply. "We were still in school and we still had so much left to prove and so much we wanted to do, so I knew you would say no. But now…"

"Now what?" She could barely push the words past her lips, her mouth was so dry.

He laughed ruefully and shook his head, glancing down at the ring. "It was a stupid mistake, really. I had managed to keep it so well hidden for so long and then two months ago I took it out to make sure everything was in order because…"

"Because?" she urged softly.

"Because I was planning to propose to you on the anniversary of our first date. Which is in five days."

That was the sweetest, most adorable thing she'd ever heard. Which really wasn't surprising, seeing as Stiles had a knack for being exceptionally thoughtful.

"And I completely ruined that," she realized, "With my stupid subtle hints and my need to know everything."

"Those were subtle?" he quirked an eyebrow in amusement.

She winced. "Not my proudest moments, but I didn't know you'd bought the ring so long ago and I was just confused and I'm so sorry."

"Lydia, babe, it's alright," he laughed. "A proposal where everything went exactly as planned wouldn't really seem right for us, would it?"

She breathed a slight sigh of relief and grinned in response. "I guess not."

They spent a moment smiling at each other and basking in the ridiculousness of the situation before Stiles's expression became serious once more. Before she could ask what he was doing, he had dropped to one knee in front of her chair.

"Lydia Martin," he smiled widely. "We've been through so much together. Our lives have been crazy and having you by my side is the one thing that has kept me from completely losing my mind. I don't know what kind of adventures our future holds, but I know that I want to tackle them with you. So what do you say? Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

The word tumbled from her lips before he even finished the most important question and she had thrown her arms around his neck and tackled him to the floor before he even registered that she had agreed.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," she squealed, pressing kisses to his face between each word before finally kissing him fully on the lips.

"So yes?" he laughed when they pulled apart, sounding a little out of breath due to the fact that she was sitting on his torso.

"Yes," she nodded.

Grinning, he sat up, snaking one arm around her back to pull her more comfortably into his lap before slipping the ring on the appropriate finger. They stared down at her hand, appreciating how perfectly the newly acquired jewelry looked in its new home.

"By the way," she said, still staring at her hand. "I would have said yes three years ago."

"Really?" he asked.

Nodding slowly, she lifted her eyes to look at him and shrugged. "I know we never talked about it, but I've known I was going to marry you since we graduated high school. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to actually get married until after college, but if you'd have asked, I would have said yes."

"Wow," he shook his head in disbelief, lacing his fingers at the small of her back. "I guess I could have used some of your subtle hints back then, huh?"

Chuckling softly, she nodded and cupped his cheeks with her palms. "And here I thought you were so observant."

He leaned forward and kissed her softly, speaking between kisses. "I think you should just spell things out for me from now on."

Smiling against his lips, she returned the pressure, working her fingers into his hair and tugging gently in the way she knew he liked. "Stiles?"

He hummed instead of responding, finding his lips otherwise occupied.

"I think now would be a good time to take me to the bedroom."

He gripped her tighter, but she spoke again before he could act upon her request.

"Or we could just do it here."

Laughing, he pulled away to look at her, his eyes twinkling. "Someone's eager."

She smirked, trailing her hands down his chest and pulling at the waistband of his pajama pants. "Haven't you heard? Subtlety isn't my strong suit."


End file.
